Speculator's Corner - A Valentine's Day Special

Nothing can quicken the heart than the prospect of making a quick flutter at the comic store, picking up the last few copies of a gem, then flipping them on eBay a few days later and making enough to pay for, well the rest of your comics that are now resting in the twenty five cent bin.

It’s a hard game, comic book speculation, it’s been blamed for bringing down an industry, turning art into commodity and bringing false hope to the ignorant.

But I also see it as a cold, harsh ruthless judge of the market. Books that there is more demand for, against expectation, go up in value as people scramble to get them.

And rather than the bad old days of nineties speculation, much concentrates on how good the comic book is, rather than if it has an embossed cover.

Tomorrow sees three such books shipping, for which one might anticipate such unexpected demand.

Glory #23 from Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell is the second of the new Extreme relaunch comics. The first, Prophet #21, tore up the charts, settling as a $10 book. Glory was a more popular character and, while assuming a similar “indie” look to Prophet, featured more traditional superheroics and ultraviolence. And beating up Nazi tanks.

There are more Nazi tanks in Peter Panzerfaust #1, also from Image, also out tomorrow, and it’s a new series by Kurtis Wiebe of Green Wake, Intrepids, and May’s Grim Leaper, and Top Cow’s Tyler Kirkham. And as always odds are pretty good that it will have been underordered and Image are already prepping a press release that it’s been sold out and a second print is on the way.

Road Rage #1 from IDW is the first comics collaboration of father and son team Stephen King and Joe Hill, adapting their story Throttle to comic form with Chris Ryall, drawn by Nelson Daniel of The Cape. No way have people ordered enough of this monster, and it seems destined to sell out fast, especially when the Stephen King publicity machine kicks into gear.

Probably.

And you may also be lucky enough to pick up a copy of Adventure Time #1 from Boom from last week. Why? $36, baby…